It
certainly was wet. One really felt sorry for the Hawaiian Tropic girls
and would have wanted to shelter them. Saturday evening was really a
rainstorm
- the pace cars leading the pack for long periods. It made you wonder
whether
it really is in the spirit of endurance racing – pace cars that is.
Shouldn't
these cars really be able to travel with designed pace in all
conditions?

Audi was the
pre-race favorite. Bentley
was considered a dark horse with some well-proven Audi technology.
Chrysler
has a chassis that many regard as benchmark, but with a clear handicap
with the engine. The Dome was known to be quick over a small number of
laps - reliability compromised by the F1-type engine. The
Sodemo-Peugeot
engines of the Pescarolo-Courages had some more power than last year.
Nobody
expected much of the Panozs and the Caddies. The rumor told that after
Le Mans Panoz will swap back to the old chassis. Then there was the
Ascari
that looked a bit outdated and messy by its construction.

In 675-class
the MG was the one to be watched.
It certainly turned fast, but in the end it was the ROC-VW that took
the
honors. A lot was also expected from the Barbour Racing Reynard, but it
turned out to be a bit of a disappointment.

In the
GTS-class: The Saleen fastest over
one lap and the Vettes over 24 hours. Seems that the all-conquering
Viper
is at the end of its development. Can't wait to see the new version
that
Oreca is supposed to work on for the coming years.

Finally we
also saw some competition on
GT-class as the Callaway raced with its very civilized engine tone
against
the awful, awful, awful ear tearing tone of the GT-Porsches – the work
horses of sports car racing.

Of course
during the race we did not yet
know about the direct injection of the factory Audis. The only hint was
that Martin Brundle told with a quiet voice that the factory engines
had
about 5% advantage in consumption. I took it as the usual racers
excuses.
Sorry Martin, but I guess sometimes drivers can be
trusted. Thinking
afterwards, the Audi engine note revealed very little if anything.
Maybe,
had I known it I would now write that my professional ear detected
something
hard in the sound. Honestly, I did not. The news came as complete
surprise
– even if the gains of direct injection has been speculated among the
“enlightened”
ones.

The Audis had
the new side outlets as had
been reported by the tech press. Also they had more ventilation on top
of the front fenders than last year. The privateer Audis were still in
the ‘00-spec as far as visual aerodynamics was considered. On the track
all the Audis look so smooth, like going on rails, marginal understeer
everywhere. (Look for more Audi details on Mike's
great R8-pages)

The Bentley
was fairly conservative and
carefully engineered. The underbody solutions looked very modest. The
side
outlets of the front diffuser were smallish to say the least. The width
of the rear diffuser was only about 70 cms. From their press
pack
figures one could calculate interesting and conflicting
figures:
"The amount of downforce generated at 150 mph is sufficient
theoretically
to drive the EXP Speed 8 upside down". Based upon
that quote: > Downforce @
150 mph 1000 kgf (2200 lbf)
.... CL = -2.0> Downforce @
200 mph 1777 kgf (3911 lbf)> Top speed
quoted at over 215 mph ....
CD = 0.43 (600 hp, transmission & tire efficiency
0.95)

The data above
conflicts with this additional
press release quote: "To maximize its potential advantage,
the EXP
Speed 8 has been tested in a Formula One specification wind tunnel at
Emmen
in Switzerland for over a year and in over a thousand configurations
resulting
in more than 2.5 tons of downforce being generated at 200 mph".>Downforce @ 150
mph, 1406 kgf (3094 lbf)>Downforce @ 200
mph, 2500 kgf (5500 lbf).....
CL= -2.8

This data
really probably just indicates
the downforce range available to the Bentley with the first numbers
closer
to Le Mans trim and the second set indicative of an ALMS type
circuit.
Though none of the numbers are "scientific" as they are based off what
the manufacturer has let us know

The Bentley
also had one of the tire jack
holes right in the middle of the diffuser. In some of the TV-shots
taken
during the rain storms, one could see a stream of water coming from the
engine compartment out the tire jack hole in the diffuser.
This stream
was presumably sucked by the low wake pressure in the diffuser. During
the rain the closed cockpit seemed to be a bit vulnerable. I would not
be surprised if they had next year a heated windscreen and enhanced
ventilation.

For
photographers the biggest curse was
the Bentley color. The British racing green is so muted that
even
a Fuji-brand film and polarizing filter is not enough. No wonder there
is so many B & W shots of this car. Still, the speed
was there.
Look out for this car next year. The will and spirit of the team seemed
really genuine and sincere.

Aerodynamically
the most interesting cars
were the Chrysler and the MG. Both had the Lola type front fender
solutions
(Allard is the probably the one that should be merited. Then again
already
in the 30s cars had separate fenders). But, I still dare to doubt the
benefit
of letting front diffuser underside flow into the cooling channel. If
my
eyes were correct the MG boasted knife type joints at least in its
lower
front wishbones (yes, according
to their technical material
they have metal flexures mounting the front suspension--Ed).
Dernie & Co. has brought some F1-tech to sportscar racing.
Rumor says
that a customer MG would cost some $750 000 – was that the idea of the
675-class? Ridiculous!

The
LM-Sarthe track requires a lot of top speed therefore downforce is
compromised.
The Chrysler had covered part of the rear diffuser with blocks. During
a pit stop they took off the rear bodywork and I had a chance to see
some
dirt water trails on the surface. I was really surprised to see the
flow
being attached all the way around the rear fenders. I still cannot
quite
grasp it, no, not even with the rear wing. Similarly I got a shot of a
Pesca-Courage from above. Flow separation on the rear top deck before
the
trailing edge was made visible by dirt.

Brundle had
told in the press conference
that there is weird bump in the middle of the Tertre Rouge -corner that
can upset the car quite severely. So there I went to make some
observations.
First I noticed that the Panozs had a clear problem. They had huge
momentary
oversteer during turn in. Looked wild and marvelous though.

The Bentley
was clearly understeering with
quite a lot of lock. It occurred that they might have had a
spool.
But the worst car there was the Ascari. It could be down to over
driving
or a wrong line choice but the car was everywhere at Tertre Rouge and
not
just sideways. The two most beautiful cars in this corner were – you
guessed
it – Audi and Chrysler – like on rails with modest lock, the cars
forgiving
a lot.

The teams that
should be credited are Joest-,
ROC- and the Vette-teams. Joest for being perfect, making it look so
easy.
They changed the rear ends of the cars in about 6 minutes! The question
again; is it really along the spirit – changing something
really
major in a car during an endurance test. ROC must be credited for
winning
from an underdog status and Vette for really understanding what this
race
is all about. The only criticism of the Vettes go to a small style
error.
Because of cruising in safe mode for the last parts of the race a
couple
of slower GT-Porsches went by. Still, at any rate the guys did a good
job.

Talking about
the Vettes one must also
comment the Saleen cars. They look really great – visually and on the
track.
But honestly and objectively, they are not in the right class. They are
closer to protos than GTS-cars.

The prize of
visual aesthetics goes to
Gulf-Johansson Audi. It was really retro and almost brought tears in
the
eyes of the most fanatic LM-fans. The sound prize goes to all the
American
cross crank V8s and somewhat surprisingly to Callaway: big power and
yet
so civilized.

It was a year
of appalling conditions.
Jacky Ickx said he had never seen such bad conditions at the Sarthe
track.
It is really a pity as the race is more than just a futile car race. It
is an outdoor festival and requires a good weather to make one. Still
this
is the ultimate race of men and machines. THE race – at least on this
side
of the pond.

Juha Kivekas (Dipl.Ing)
is the managing director of Apextrem Ltd. which is a small Finnish
R&D
company specializing in vehicle dynamics and aerodynamics. He
has
also worked as a professional race engineer in lower categories and is
the aerodynamacist for the Finnish Ski Jumping team. He has
participated
in some 160 aerodynamics R&D projects varying from bridges and
race
cars to subwaterlevel craft and space devices.